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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803159">dance macabre</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asvan/pseuds/Asvan'>Asvan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Disco Elysium (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Harry needs a therapist, He's miserable, M/M, it's all in his head, there is no sex really, this is more about the terror of existence then sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:20:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,004</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803159</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asvan/pseuds/Asvan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Another Dolorean dreamscape, but this time Kim decided to join.<br/>He &amp; Her Innocence don't do anything. Just... watch. And it's horrible.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Du Bois/Dolores Dei (one-sided), Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi (one-sided)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dance macabre</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>YOU — The tumultuous landscape of your dreams seems quiet today. Not welcoming – no, never – but quiet. You are alone with yourself – which is to say, not alone – but the rest of you seems to be slumbering. Or just laying low, waiting for the perfect moment to raise their heads (*headsss*) in a swift and venomous motion.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — You should probably just kill yourself, buddy. Would be… easier for everybody involved.</p><p>INLAND EMPIRE — Or take a walk in here. You cannot sleep anyway. This – this is lurid and dangerous and unfulfilling, that’s not how people dream.</p><p>PERCEPTION (Sight) — There is a stage up ahead, barely visible in the dark, *looming*, dusty curtains and creaky boards, a nightmare, a thrill, a promise – broken or kept, doesn’t matter really, you feel sick anyway.</p><p>YOU — Your palms are sweaty, your heart is racing in your throat, your intestines are tied in a knot – and yet you approach, unsteadily, carefully - and stop, blinded by the stage lights, shining from nowhere, catching you off-guard and terrified, wishing you’d never walk near this stage, wishing you’d never *be* at all.</p><p>THE AUDIENCE — The lights dim and you see you the audience – two figures, equally radiant and equally contemptuous, sneering at you with the grace of the saints. They *are* saints – halos of uncaring light shine on the empty rows of chairs all around them and they look at you, as if waiting for the performance to start. They do not applaud.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — This is the most important performance of your life, Harry-boy, and you’ve already failed! They will judge you, *hard*, and it will be a torture to bear, but you will crawl up to them on your knees and you will ask for *more* because you are *pathetic*.</p><p>LIMBIC SYSTEM — Absolutely disgusting.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — Drunk and rotten and *bloated* to the extreme. All you have is your body and you managed to fuck that up with *great* skill and *undeniable* purpose. You have nothing left. Nothing. Just a bundle of piss-soaked regret and self-loathing and you’ll have to show them who you *are*, right on this stage.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — But the catch is – they already now. You’ve failed. Your entire life is a failure and the reason you continue to crawl through life, fucked as you are, is a riddle to me. But I, too, know the answer. You are an idiot! Literally brain-dead. There is no helping you. Some may show you pity, but you won’t be able to recognize it, because there’s simply not enough functioning brain cells left. *These* people, though? No pity from them. Never. They *hate* you, Harry, and that hatred runs cold and deep, and you will drown in it, and you will thank them for it.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — Now go, show them what you got! Break a leg. And an arm. Better yet – break your spine.</p><p>SHE — As you crawl on stage, the woman with the glowing lungs turns Her head towards you. Her face is a mask of neutrality, etched deep, deep into the bone by the masterful sculptors at Her court – She will keep Her face no matter what calamity strikes Her lands. And so She keeps her face at the sight of you – easily, so easily, as if you were a bug on Her dress, not even worthy of squashing and ugly enough to pay you a fraction of attention – how could a thing so doomed by evolution live to climb Her gown?</p><p>HE — The man turns to meet your eyes as well – but you cannot meet His, the light of His halo breaking in the lenses of His round glasses.</p><p>INLAND EMPIRE — It’s a good thing you can’t see His eyes. You wouldn’t like what you saw in them anyway.</p><p>LIMBIC SYSTEM — Her hair smells of apricots and His – of motor oil, but these smells are not for you. No more. Not ever.</p><p>ENDURANCE — The heart in your chest is expanding like a cancerous growth, and it hurts, oh it hurt so, so much – but not enough to kill you.</p><p>INLAND EMPIRE — The world is never kind enough to kill you. You’ll have to do that yourself.</p><p>YOU — You fall on the stage, grabbing your chest, clawing at it, coughing breathlessly – and they continue to look, their radiance burning you as you writhe on the ground, the agony eternal and… pleasurable? You wonder if flagellation would bring the same feelings for the old monks – suffering of the flesh purified by the gaze of god.</p><p>ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — Harry! Harry… There is nothing to purify – you will burn, all of you, a filthy lump of desire, never wanted, never rewarded. The catharsis will come at the very same moment the last of you dies, and only for the fraction of second you will be able to sense it in its entirety. A fitting end for you, really.</p><p>INLAND EMPIRE — Do you even have a body here? What is contrasting and convulsing all around you, an electrical shock, more painful than pleasurable, what is this pile of stinking flesh, half-working, half-rotten, wasting its last breaths to mutter the false names of the dispassionate gods? Maybe it’s you. Or maybe you are hidden inside, detached and crying in horror, the endless expanse of uncaring universe sprawled around you, its terrible shape moving in unpredictable and wrathful ways, and you are just waiting for things to end?</p><p>YOU — No matter, really. It’s almost over now – the body makes the last of its pitiful wet motions and you are given the chance to glimpse – if only for a fraction of a second – at the saints, unperturbed by the light. The shock ripples through your body, burning the nerve endings, smashing your guts to pulp, frying your heart and lighting your skull from the inside. Your lungs are left untouched – lungs are the holy symbol of Her Innocence and so She would never touch yours.</p><p>INLAND EMPIRE — This is the end. Finally.</p><p>YOU —“Thank you.”</p>
<ol>
<li>- [Open your eyes.]</li>
</ol>
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